Graves' Retreat (2 page)

    Graves released the ball.

    The umpire seemed to cry “Strike!” even before the whirling white globe reached the plate.

    And there was no doubt about the trueness of the pitch. It hurtled across the home base, little more than a white blur that dipped deviously right at the befuddled batter’s knees.

    “Go to it, Les!” shouted the people in the stands.

    No other player on the team inspired the whistles, shouts and stamping feet Les Graves did.

    “One more’n the game’s over!” yelled several other people.

    “Strike him out real good!”

    “Give ’em your Jean Laffite!”

    The “Jean Laffite” was so named by a sportswriter because he claimed that it had the “destructive force of a cannon ball hurled from the grand Frenchman’s warship.”

    So Les gave ’em “Jean” and “Jean” caused the batter to jerk back several full inches from the plate as the umpire once again called “Strike!”

    The game was over.

    The team manager, a chunky bald fireman named Harding, came up and threw his arm around Les. “You keep it up, Les, you’ll be playing for the New York Mets.” That was the team everybody was betting on to be the best in the National League. Then he said, “Hell’s bells, you get any better, Sterling’s going to
have
to play us.”

    Les just smiled.

    

    

    By sunset half an hour later, the stadium was empty. For most folks this was suppertime and mothers and wives did not abide men or boys who missed supper.

    Les Graves sat in the bleachers alone. There was a tune he liked. A sad tune. He hummed it to himself.

    He had a habit of throwing the ball up into the air at such an angle that he had to reach way out to grab it. He felt this helped improve him as a defensive player. He needed to have some additional skill other than his pitching because he was a terrible batter.

    But he paid no attention to his little game now, doing it all unconsciously. His blue eyes watched the road that ran in back of the stadium.

    The road where Susan said she’d be.

    The road where, now, Susan was nowhere to be found.

    He threw the ball up a few more minutes, stopping when he missed one and it cracked hard against his knee.

    Then he climbed to the top bleacher where he had a pretty good look at the city, a place the mayor called, with monotonous determination, “the Chicago of Iowa.” But it was a quickly growing town, no doubt about it, eighteen thousand inhabitants, the service of many different railroads, more than sixty electric lights (mostly used in hotels and businesses) and a telephone company with at least two hundred and fifty connections in the city, and connections with seventy-five cities and towns outside.

    There was no doubt about it. Cedar Rapids was a good place to live. Clean, progressive, honest in its government.

    His time here had been the happiest in his life until he met Susan Edmonds, daughter of the man for whom he worked. He’d had another girl here, May, but when he’d met Susan- But he sensed their relationship was at its end. A part of him just wanted her to pronounce the funeral words and get it over with. She was a banker’s daughter and way out of his class-

    His eyes searched every access to the stadium for sight of her.

    But his heart told him a truth his eyes did not need to confirm. She would miss their meeting (he’d written her a letter yesterday, asking her to come here now) because she was afraid to say what she really wanted to say-

    To let him explain why he’d become so angry Sunday night and said the things he had.

    He stood there in his white uniform till stars began to appear in the bluish haze of night sky. Dogs lonely as he bayed at the silver disc of moon. Down on First Street he could hear the player pianos and the roar of beery laughter.

    He was just turning to go-wanting a beer now, wanting at least loud if not decent companionship-when below the bleachers he heard the clopping of a single horse and saw the shape of her carriage.

    He felt exultant that she was here and terrified she’d only come to say good-bye.

    “You got my letter?”

    He could scarcely see her. Hovering in the back of her small carriage.

    Hiding, really.

    He decided not to pester her. Afraid she might bolt and run like a frightened doe.

    “I’m glad to see you, Susan.”

    Still, she said nothing.

    He just sensed her staring at him.

    He said, “I struck out eleven batters tonight.”

    She said, “I need a little more time to think, Les. To know my feelings.”

    “All right.”

    “I’m trying to do what’s best for both of us.”

    “I know.”

    She said, “I saw May today.”

    "Oh?”

    “And she looked lovely. Really lovely.”

    “May is lovely. That doesn’t mean I care about her.”

    She leaned forward and touched his hand gently and said, “Good night, Les.”

    “Good night.”

    He watched her carriage recede into the gloom, the lonely sound of the single horse filling the night.

    

    

    “Morning, Les.”

    “Morning, George.”

    “Beautiful day.”

    “It sure is.”

    George, a gray-haired man who worked in the teller’s station next to Les, leaned forward and whispered, “You look terrible, Les."

    “Didn’t sleep?”

    “Drinking?”

    Despite his mood, Les smiled. George was forty-eight. His last son had just left home to go to business college in Chicago. George needed a younger one to look after. Les was a natural choice. “No,” Les said, “I wasn’t drinking. At least not much.”

    “Pearly’s?”

    Les sighed. “That I have to admit to. Pearly’s is where I drank.” George, who wore a green eyeshade and a black sleeve garter and whose fingers were permanently stained with ink, clucked. “You know the kind of trouble you can get into.”

    Almost to himself, Les said, “Maybe that’s why I went there.” George Buss looked stricken. Then he peered closer at Les, as if he were a doctor and Les a new virus. “You-aren’t still sneaking around seeing his daughter Susan, are you?”

    But before Les could answer, the second of three doors on the east side of the bank opened up. A tall, trim man in an expensive blue, Edwardian-cut suit stepped out, holding well-manicured hands to either lapel of his coat. With his golden hair and confident brown gaze and almost arrogantly angled mustache, he looked like the sort of man who was always captain of the rowing team at Yale.

    He proceeded then to walk down the length of the six teller stations, a military man inspecting the troops. And that’s how the tellers -three men, three women-responded. Throwing their shoulders straight back. Tricking out their mouths with gleaming smiles. Nodding a by-God-and-by-gumption nod to the man.

    Kind monarch that he was, the golden man nodded in return. It was best to give the troops a feeling of self-esteem. This made them willing to work longer hours and ask for fewer raises.

    The golden man, who was named Byron Fuller, paused when he came to Les. “Feeling all right today, Mr Graves?”

    Les nodded. “A touch of the flu.”

    Fuller studied him. Then he smiled. “I hope it was nothing more serious than a few stolen hours at Pearly’s.”

    Next to Les, George Buss broke out into a sweat.

    “Pearly’s, Mr. Fuller?” Les said, once he’d found his voice. That was their contract. They called him “Mr.” and he called them “Mr.” or “Miss” or “Mrs.”

    The faint smile remained on Fuller’s mouth. “Certainly you’ve heard of the place, Mr. Graves.”

    “Oh, I’ve heard of it.”

    “And certainly you’ve even visited it once or twice.”

    Les cleared his throat. His shoulders were still thrown back. He was still trying to smile, the way Mr. Fuller wanted them to smile seven hours a day, five days a week. “Well, once maybe.”

    Fuller looked at George Buss. “Now, if you were a wagering man, would you think that Mr. Graves had visited Pearly’s only once during his two years in Cedar Rapids?”

    George gulped. “I-I wouldn’t know, sir.”

    Fuller smiled back at Les. “Well, between us and the lamppost, Mr Graves, I sincerely hope you did ‘tie one on’ last night, and I hope it was at Pearly’s.”

    “You do, Mr. Fuller?”

    “I certainly do.”

    “And why would that be, if you don’t mind my asking?”

    This time Fuller-who was behaving strangely indeed-allowed himself an outright chuckle. “Because you’re going to get some news today, Mr Graves, that will make you glad you allowed yourself to celebrate last night.”

    Les glanced anxiously at George, then back to Fuller. “Would that be good news or bad news, Mr. Fuller?”

    And with that, Fuller reached inside the teller station and slapped Les on the back as if they were the oldest and best of friends. “Why, good news for you-and great news for the whole city of Cedar Rapids!”

    Then, quickly as his good mood had come up, it vanished. He made an elaborate gesture of taking his pocket watch from his vest pocket and of scrutinizing it as if for some flaw.

    “It is now eight fifty-nine and forty-two seconds.” He nodded formally to the bank guard, tubercular man who Fuller insisted wear enough weaponry to intimidate the entire James gang. "The door, Spencer, if you please.”

    Just as the door was opening, and just as Fuller started to move snappily back to his office, he turned back to Les and said, “You appear to have won yourself another admirer, Mr Graves.”

    “Who would that be, Mr Fuller?”

    “Last night my fiancee, Susan, said she drove down and watched you pitch at scrimmage. She said you struck out eleven men.”

    With that he retired to his office.

    

    

    Les spent the rest of the morning thinking of two things-Susan and the mysterious “news” promised by Byron Fuller.

    Not that he had a great deal of time to consider either subject at length. The bank was busy. The Fourth of July was at hand.

    Several times Les looked up to see Byron Fuller, hands behind his back, rocking a bit on his heels and smiling at him.

    What was going on?

    But just when he started to ponder the matter, another line formed in front of his station. The women were given to bonnets and flowered hats; the men to Stetsons and fedoras. At one point a few severely dressed Amish people were in his line.

    Usually, while they waited, customers contented themselves with appraising the bank’s interior, most of which was done in real mahogany, with flocked wallpaper and genuine marble for counters. There were also a number of Civil War paintings, of the impossibly heroic school, with soldier eyes glowing and muzzle-smoke white as the clouds of heaven itself. Many of the customers had been in the war and knew better. Young boys lying bloody and dead-be damned the color of their uniforms-looked anything but heroic.

    And so the morning went.

    

    

    Around eleven George Buss, whose station was quiet for the morning, leaned over and said, “It sure must be big news. Look.”

    And he pointed to the glass wall of Clinton Edmonds’ office.

    Edmonds stood with his important thumbs hooked importantly in either of his vest pockets. He stood next to Byron Fuller. Edmonds, who with his chunky but muscular body and his white mutton-chop sideburns resembled President Chester Arthur himself, was obviously staring at Les.

    And, like Byron Fuller, smiling.

    “It surely must be big. Real big,” George Buss said. Then he adjusted his green eyeshade and black sleeve garter and got ready to greet another line of bubbly ladies and sulky men.

    But however big-or small-the news might be, Edmonds and Fuller apparently planned to keep it to themselves for a time longer because as soon as Karl Halliman, the editor of the
Enquirer,
appeared, the three men repaired to the boardroom. Edmonds himself entered last (Les could see all this from the teller station) and thumbed a gummy yellow strip of paper to the doorknob, which every bank employee knew was the official symbol of do not disturb. Nobody was permitted to use the symbol but Edmonds himself, and nobody was permitted to disturb him if it was out.

    Les looked up at the clock, not knowing what to do. His lunch hour started in five minutes. Should he wait and see if they called him in or-

    But he needed food.

    His bout at Pearly’s last night had left him weak. And there was a game tonight.

    He needed food, good food, and in decent quantities. He thought of the Charter House restaurant, of the way they fixed roast beef and mashed potatoes with gravy and bright green peas.

    He was making himself weak… he was so hungry. He was just closing and locking his cash drawer and about to leave his station when-

    The boardroom door opened. Byron Fuller came out, looked around, then summoned the guard over. The man listened to what Fuller had to say, then nodded.

    He disappeared quickly.

    Byron stood there, obviously waiting. Once his eyes met Les’. This time Byron’s smile was a positive grin.

    The guard returned, carrying a silver pitcher of water cold enough to raise silver sweat on the sides.

    He handed the pitcher to Byron Fuller and then both men headed back to where they’d come from.